1. Shrublands isles, cliffs, caves

2. Great northern forest,  kicker birds

3. Ice wastes, frozen megabirds

4. High shrubland, shifting stones and wild minerals. 

5. Water forest, giant mangrove-types.

6. Forest and tidal caverns.

7. Fungal shrubland.

8. Cool grasslands, snowcats and aurochs.

9. Warm grasslands, snakes and mega-aurochs.

10. Quaking grasslands; wildcats and aurochs.

11. Desert of the Megalizards.

12. Foggy boglands.

.......

F: Fauns: Hunters, Obsidian Spearheads

R: Rusalka: Aquatic Herders, Nautilus Shells

D: Duende: Fishing, Stone Tools

S: Striga: Arbory/Vintnery/Hunting, Fine stone / wood houses

J: Jotnar: Fishing; drying racks, fishing hovels.

1. Figure out where on the map you think is a good place for their origin site. This is the place of their before-our-history-begins existence, not the one they'll have when regular history rolls in.

2. Flip over to the culture section and pick a subsistence type they practiced in simple form in those original times. It probably wasn't the only one they practiced; it's the one they will carry forward into known history.

3. Tell us where that origin site was, as an area, and what the subsistence was. If you want to throw in details on things left behind in abandoned camps/sites, please do!

...........................

1. Shrublands isles, cliffs, caves

2. Great northern forest,  kicker birds

3. Ice wastes, frozen megabirds

4. High shrubland, shifting stones and wild minerals. 

5. Water forest, giant mangrove-types.

6. Forest and tidal caverns.

7. Fungal shrubland.

8. Cool grasslands, snowcats and aurochs.

9. Warm grasslands, snakes and mega-aurochs.

10. Quaking grasslands; wildcats and aurochs.

11. Desert of the Megalizards.

12. Foggy boglands.

...........................................................................................

And go!

So, Class, please open your Awen PDFs to page 6......

We're going to do two 'rounds' of biomes at once, as in the Lifescapes section of the book.  Your job here is easy.  Respond to this post with two map coordinates (A3, F7) to stake your claim to those (That way, you can take your time figuring out what you want there and come back, and nobody will have accidentally poached the location you were thinking about).

 Then, go to the book, figure out what biome you'd like to center on each coordinate, along with modifications and maybe a bit of description (no names, though; there's nobody here to name things yet), come back here, and respond to yourself with the full description of those biomes.  If you've got thoughts on your selected areas, and want to discuss before finalizing, we can chat about them.

After someone posts their descriptions, feel free to ask them a question  about the flora and fauna, if you like, which they get to answer as they like; things like "You said there's caves.  Anything living there?"

(Remember not to jump ahead and introduce Kiths anywhere; they aren't here yet!).

1) (My first addition) Is a huge northern forest, shading from a fairly hot rainforest at the very east coast to a much more seasonal, temperate mixed forest in the west.  Two notable features here.  First, giant flightless "kicker birds", which...  Imagine that a lovely purple chocobo had babies with a rabid, hateful ostrich.  They'll potentially be very useful to someone, but they are filled with malice.  Second, down at the border with (3), those mountains?  Just completely chock-full of jade.

2) Is the ice wastes, with the giant frozen birds (possibly a larger flying relative of the kickers in the forest?  Dunno.)

3) Is the scrubland of the interesting (and sometimes wandering) stones!

4) Is forests extending up from the inner sea there.  These are riddled with caves, many flooded, and groan with winter ice.

5) The mushroom scrubland!  Notably, the weird little border I put on that is to mark "Elevation change", just so that biome border makes sense; I imagine the mushroom scrub as a plateau with a high western edge, tilting down toward the sea in the east.  

6, 7, 8) Is all grassland, but not all the same........

6) (my other addition) is overall quite cool, getting none of the warm wind, nor any of the underground heat the rest of the southern grasslands benefit from.  Like (7) and (8), there are large grazers here, and like (8) they are hunted by large cats, though the cats here get enormously furry in the cold seasons.  There are outcroppings of quartz in the northern areas.

7) Benefits from both the warm winds and presumably some of the geothermal activity so evident in the south; the winters here are largely just dry, not snowy.  This climate is ideal for the snakes that infest the area, which drive off a lot of other wildlife, excepting the shaggy beasts, which grow huge here (because they live longer?  Because they're a wildly different species?).

8) Is more temperate, benefiting from geothermal heat (and suffering earthquakes and likely other...   Events); bovines, wild cats.

9) Is the desert with the huge huge lizards; I'm going to suggest that with the elevation change I threw in to (5), it's likely partly a desert because it's in the rain shadow of that plateau edge.   Also, hey, does this share poisonous snakes with the bitey part of the grasslands?

10) Is the foggy boglands; it's down below the plateau edge of (5); very much isolated, this.   It kind of feels this might be a chunk that broke off the (5) plateau, maybe?   

....

So, look at where your biomes are, their neighbors, and so on; is there anything you want to add to your biomes given this map, or any crossover you want to check in on with the other biomes?

(For myself, I'm like, I feel like all the shaggy herbivores in 6,7,8 should be related, like, could these be Aurochs of different varieties?  Maybe with, like, more horns, just because that's a fun look.)

• Chattel slavery is a no-go; it's not ultimately interesting or fun at all.  Things like hostage-taking, ransoms, and the like, those are potentially interesting issues, but slavery is a boring form for evil to take.
• Philosophies of racial/kith supremacy as distinctive bits of a cult, culture, or whatever are likewise dull as hell.  Cultural supremacy, coming from a culture shouting "Our way of life is best", that's potentially interesting, but "Let's remake the racism of reality" always feels like a failure of imagination to me.
• Cultures or cults that treat sexual violence (not including kink, mind) or child abuse as acceptable are just *squick;* why would I want to play with or work on a setting with that in?  So no.

If your list has other things, or would tighten up any of mine (like, add hostage taking to the no-go list), say so here!   Or let me know to add them privately!  As you prefer!

Third, I'm gong to start us off assuming that everyone will do a "daily check-in", read up, see what we've got going on, and respond that way.  If we're getting a full load of responses rapid-fire, I'll pose the next bit to respond to the same day, and maybe we'll speed up, but no pressure on that.

Questions?  Notes?  Bueller?